Environmentalists want more. County commissioners want less.
The question haunting a delicate wilderness compromise between Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt and Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt is whether either of those two sides can -- and will -- derail efforts to designate 1 million acres of official wilderness in Utah's western desert."Given the support we have for America's Red Rock Wilderness Act, it would be wrong for us to compromise," said Heidi McIntosh, conservation director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which is advocating 2.6 million acres in the same area where Leavitt and Babbitt have proposed 1 million acres.
On Tuesday, SUWA and LightHawk, a group of environmentalist pilots, hosted journalists on a flight over western desert lands included in the Leavitt-Babbitt deal, but more importantly those that were left out of the proposal.
"What they included was good, but it could have been, should have been more," McIntosh said.
Because of a promise to Babbitt they would seriously consider the wilderness deal, the Utah Wilderness Coalition -- a network of pro-wilderness environmental groups from around the nation -- has not taken an official position on the 1 million-acre proposal.
However, the overt publicity campaign on the need for greater western desert wilderness reveals not-so-subtle opposition to the Leavitt-Babbitt plan currently presented. And if a 1 million-acre bill were to somehow pass Congress, she promised it will not end the debate.
"We will back next year and every other year after that until our bill (2.6 million acres in the western desert) passes," she said. "What they have proposed is not a resolution of the wilderness debate."
Under the Leavitt-Babbitt deal, Leavitt must persuade county commissions opposed to wilderness to sign off on the package. Babbitt must convince environmentalists it is a good compromise.
McIntosh said the environmental community agreed to consider the proposal as "an experiment in consensus-building worth undertaking." Given the polarization over wilderness designations, the fact the two sides would come together in a spirit of negotiation is a remarkable achievement itself.
But wilderness war wounds run deep on both sides, and it may be difficult to keep the parties at the table.
"The impression we got was if we disagreed, that it was something we just couldn't support, all sides would shake hands and walk away from it," she said. "It would then be up to Congress to decide."
Does that mean environmentalists could walk away and kill the deal? "Our understanding was if we opposed the deal, Babbitt would not try to force anything on the environmental community," McIntosh said.
Brad Barber, deputy director of the governor's Office of Planning and Budget and one of the chief architects of the deal, said Leavitt and Babbitt are committed to making the deal happen.
"The only two people who can call this deal off are the governor and the secretary," Barber said. "We have agreed to negotiate with the secretary, and the secretary with us. If he says the deal is off, or the governor says it's off, that's it. It's over."
Barber said Leavitt and Babbitt are committed to a process of negotiated settlement, and he hopes disagreements over acreage doesn't prompt environmentalists or local governments to drop out of the process.
"Obviously, we can't hogtie anyone to the negotiating table forever," he said. "But there is always room for discussion and negotiation. I don't know how much room there is, though."
Anything much more than a million acres and local governments, as well as Utah's congressional delegation, will likely oppose the deal. Anything less and environmental groups would immediately walk away.
That is why Barber and his federal counterpart in the compromise, Martha Hahn, believe the 1-million-acre figure represents that delicate balance. "That much land in that part of the state is substantial," Barber said. "Go walk it, drive it, see how much a million acres is. It's not to be scoffed at."
Barber agreed with McIntosh there is nothing in the deal that prevents any advocacy group or member of Congress from pushing for more wilderness in the same area sometime in the future.
"We would like this to be a consensus bill where we could say, for now, we are finished with wilderness in this part of the state, and we will not be back next year with another bill," he said. "But it's impossible to tie the hands of a future Congress."